Finding God in Business
A short panel discussion in 2012 by Dr Dallas Willard, Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California, author The Divine Conspiracy.
Here's some excerpts from the talk:
"I think God works far beyond the Church, and thank God He's out ahead of us all the time. And that's because He loves the world, and business is a primary arrangement on God's part for people to love one another and serve one another.
"People often ask me to talk on things like 'Is God in business?'. If God wasn't in business, it wouldn't even be there. It has this natural tendency to reach out to the neighbour and the neighbour and the neighbour and the neighbour, all around the world. That's in the nature of business. And it reaches out, like most of God's operations, running beyond the conscious motives of the people who are doing it.
"Business is a primary moving force of the love of God in human history. And it doesn't wait until Christians get a bright idea about it, or Muslims or whoever. It's just there. That's God, that's the kingdom of God at work. We have to recognize that God is always out front of the church, and He's working in many ways. God is at work. And the intent is to enable us to love one another and cause the glory of God to shine. I'm so glad when Jesus was talking, He didn't say, let your words so shine before men. He said, 'Let your light shine before men, so that they would see your good works.' And then they say, 'Hey, God is really wonderful.' They don't even comment about me or you. They go to God because of what they see of His action in our life.
"Business is one vocation, and we also need to think about the lawyers and the accountants, and the doctors. Normally business schools and law schools don't give them anything more and that is actually a radical change in the last 75 or 80 years. Now the schools are embarrassed to talk about the common good, and many of them will actually try to disallow any talk of that. And I've seen technical writings in the field of professions that say, 'All that is required is that everyone compete at their highest level, and that will result in the best service of the profession to the public.' It doesn't work that way because that's nothing but self-advancement, and that does not have the blessing of God and humanity on it."
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A talk by Dr Dallas Willard, 19/10/2016